Chapter 22

Chapter 22

M ariah had never seen the servant girl before.

Every day, like clockwork, the same mute servant brought her a single paltry meal. Her hair was always up, and her face shrouded. She never once said a word to Mariah, only simply opening the small grate at the bottom of Mariah’s door, slipping in the tray, and vanishing back into darkness.

Today’s girl, though … today’s girl was different.

She had long, ash blonde hair, and her rags were torn and stained. A kitchen maid, most likely, given the flour dusting her hollow cheeks and the burn scars on her hands. She carried an allume lamp, eyes darting like a nervous mouse as she stumbled gracelessly down the hall. She halted outside Mariah’s cell, clumsily fumbling for her keys.

Instinct alone had Mariah rising from her cot. She still wore her ridiculous pink dress—now stained and tattered, but still just as demeaning—but she ignored the brush of tulle against her thighs as she gripped her paring knife behind her back.

The girl awkwardly balanced the tray on her hip as she slid a key into the iron lock to Mariah’s cell.

The door. Not the small grate at the bottom.

“I look forward to seeing all he has planned for you.”

No. Mariah would not sit idly by to find out what Shawth meant.

She dove into herself, into the part of her soul that was still too dark and shadowed. Her threads had slowly come back to life, but they were still weak, only a glimmer of what they once were. But she latched onto them, wrapping around them and drawing them to the surface.

They seemed to grumble against her, almost lethargically, but they obeyed. Mariah could have sighed with relief.

The moment the girl opened the cell, still trying to balance that tray of frozen, nutritionless food on her hip, Mariah exploded.

Light shot from her free hand like coiled vines, striking the girl in the chest. She stumbled back with a cry, hitting the far wall, the tray crashing to the ground and the cell door clanging open.

“No—wait! Stop!” the girl yelled hoarsely as light rippled off Mariah. She lunged for the exit, pausing for a flash of a heartbeat at the threshold. Her light still held the girl pinned to the wall, her struggles weak as she sobbed.

The girl was innocent in this. And she might die for her failure.

But Mariah was too broken to care about all those she couldn’t save.

“I’m sorry,” Mariah said in a sad whisper, before she sprinted down the corridor, leaving the servant girl there, whimpering and terrified. Her light snapped back under her skin, leaving a faint, luminescent glow as she reached those steep, slick stairs.

And began to climb.

Mariah’s heart was pounding in her ears, atrophied muscles in her legs holding her up only through the flood of adrenaline pouring through her veins. When she reached the landing, stumbling out into the cold, quiet hallways of Khento, she paused, panting heavily. Her body trembled, and her mind was focused on one singular goal.

Escape. Escape. Escape.

The word thrashed and hammered through her skull, lurching her frozen feet back into motion. They led her through the halls, kept company only by the soft patter of her footfalls, the heavy wheezes of her lungs, the faint glow of her skin.

Mariah didn’t know how long she ran. Only that if she stopped, it would all be over.

A pair of massive oak doors loomed at the end of the hall. She stumbled, steps faltering, but kept pushing forward. Slamming into the wood, she fumbled for the handle. With a final shudder, her hand found metal, and she wrenched it down as she pushed with all the strength she had left.

The door swung open with a too-loud groan, and Mariah stumbled outside into a decadent garden spotted with late winter snow.

And above her head shone the moons. Two slender slivers—one silver, one gold—that seemed to pulse brighter as Mariah stepped into their light, taking in a deep, sobbing, choking inhale.

Her cheeks chilled as tears tracked down her skin. Those moons were almost gone; the Spring Equinox was almost here. But they had not vanished yet, and she took a moment to revel in their light, her magic dancing with more life and joy than it had in weeks.

It wasn’t enough to chase away the darkness, but light needed the dark to shine its brightest.

A branch snapped, no more than a few feet away. Mariah’s skin pulsed with magic, gripping her knife with all her meager strength.

A figure, seated on a stone garden bench, shifted in the soft moonlight. Silver and gold reflected off black hair, and the weight of the universe slammed into her as she met a brilliant, haunted gemstone blue gaze.

Eons stretched between them, as Mariah held Andrian’s stare in the dim light of her magic and the moons.

“I know you,” he murmured into the quiet, and it was like time restarted.

Her fingers twitched around her dagger. She’d wanted to simply escape, to flee into the darkness. But her magic was still not strong enough; there was still a gaping hole trying to refill. If the lords caught her, she’d be finished.

There might be one very simple way to ensure her safety.

Not just her own. No, there was another held captive here in this evil castle, and he was seated no more than a few feet from her, beautiful and broken in the moonlight.

Memories of shattered pain haunted her, but her soul still loved his. And if she could free them both from this evilness, she had to try.

She took a single, hesitant, fateful step forward. “And I know you,” she whispered back, voice hoarse in the cold.

The silence between them pressed against her skull, heart pounding in her chest like the beats of a war drum.

“How … how do I know you?” He looked like he’d been ripped from his bed, not at all dressed for the cold gardens. Black cotton trousers and a black shirt, unbuttoned and slung carelessly around his shoulders. With another step forward she could see his Mark, stark against his skin, the still-healing cut down its center scabbed and raw. The cool, flat-edge side of her knife pressing into her forearm burned.

Staring at his Mark, with his question ringing between them, she was frozen. Paralyzed by a sudden realization that despite her magic now freed, this still might not work. Nothing else that made a normal bonding ceremony was here—no candles, no sweetly spoken swears, and they were far more clothed than she’d been for other ceremonies. Even the knife she gripped was nothing more than a simple paring knife from a dining set, nothing like the decorative blade normally used.

She gritted her teeth. Took a deep inhale, holding it in her lungs until it burned, before exhaling in a long, steady breath.

This would work. Those things, those other elements … they weren’t what was most important to the bond. She hesitated to call it all part of another antiquated ritual, but in her soul, she knew what was important.

Mariah had her sparkling magic, her blood, and the light of the moons.

Andrian had his Mark and his shadow-wreathed soul.

That was all that mattered.

This would work.

She took the final step to him, standing in front of his legs, her bare skin grazing the material of his trousers. He tilted back his head, something desperately profound shining in his eyes.

“You know me from another life. One I hope to find you in again.” They were the first words she found, carrying softly on the night breeze, and her soul thrashed in pain at how much she meant them.

She flipped her knife in her hand, wrapping her palm around the blade, ready to slice through soft skin.

“You have very beautiful eyes.”

Mariah stiffened. Forced herself to look closer at him, as if she could peer into his soul.

She swore she saw him there—the real him. Not the one who’d been paraded around this castle for the last few weeks, who hurled vile words at her at every opportunity. Not the one who’d flayed her skin or shredded her heart.

She saw the broken man who’d made himself her greatest weakness. Her consort. Her King.

Mariah smiled, thickness clogging her throat. A strange, foreign half-smile danced across her lips.

“You do, too, Rhoi .”

Andrian cocked his head to the side—a small, child-like movement. “I’ve seen your eyes before, and I think about them more than I think about anything else. I see them in my dreams. They haunt my nightmares.” His eyes flickered. “Are you a demon? Or a goddess?” he finished in a whisper.

Mariah’s heart thundered against her ribs. He sat deathly still as she moved even closer to him. Lifted a leg, settling it on the side of his. Lowered herself onto his lap.

His skin was hot and feverish against her, despite the chill of the night air. A line of sweat dampened his brow. She leaned in, forehead pressing against his, his heat consuming her ever-present chill as their noses brushed.

“I am neither,” she whispered against his skin. “I am your retribution.”

Shadows flickered across his face, dulling the manic brightness in his eyes. Shadows that made her heart race in excitement and soar with the idea of hope.

She knew those shadows. She welcomed those shadows. They called to her magic, as much as the day called to the night and the darkness called to the light.

The threads in her soul leapt and twined through her blood. Mariah sank herself into it, wrapping herself around as many of them as she could muster. Both silver and gold answered her, spinning together in a glorious maelstrom of light and power.

She clenched her left hand tightly around the blade of her knife, hardly registering the faint sting as the steel cut her skin. Blood welling to the surface, she loosened her grip, switching the knife to her right hand, swinging it up around her body. The blade glinted with the ruby droplets of her blood as she lowered it to his still-healing chest, to the line bisecting her dragon-shaped Mark, maw roaring and devouring.

Andrian’s eyes blinked with shock, clarity winning for a moment. He looked at her— into her—then down to his chest.

When he returned his stare to hers, something new shone there.

Determination. Devotion.

Love.

He nodded to her, and that was all she needed.

Mariah sliced her simple paring knife through his Mark.

When she slammed her bleeding palm to his chest, when her blood laced with silver and gold light met his, the earth beneath their feet trembled and quaked.